326 TWELVE O’CLOCK HIGH
place of what should have been an M10 “Wolverine” tank destroyer for the Medal of
Honor combat scene (though more than 6,700 M10s were built during WWII,
none were available in 1954, much to Murphy’s chagrin). The film omits Murphy’s
two Silver Star– winning battles and renders the combat deaths of a number of his
friends in rather melodramatic terms. The movie’s main weakness, though, is
due to the repressive requisites of patriotic Cold War ideology and the strictures
of the Motion Picture Production Code (aka “Hays Code”), which forbade foul
language and vio lence that was too explic itly bloody. Consequently the film
sanitizes every thing: American infantryman, the real ity of combat, even the
landscape and weather. Suffice to say that real soldiers are often grimy and their
language is often bitterly profane. The soldiers’ uniforms in To Hell and Back are
always too clean and well pressed, and their banter is unrealistically genteel.
Likewise, the combat scenes are action packed but largely devoid of blood and
suffering; war- torn Eu rope seems far less damaged than expected; the weather
conditions are too temperate and dry for Anzio in 1944 or Holtzwihr in 1945.
Having tried his best to make the movie as au then tic as pos si ble, Audie Murphy
was disappointed with the film, which he dismissed as nothing more than a
“Western in uniform” that “missed by a mile.” Most irksome to Murphy was the
film’s concluding scene, showing him being awarded the Medal of Honor and a
raft of other Allied military decorations. His autobiography had excluded this
event, and he would have preferred it omitted from the film as well, but he was
overruled by the commercially savvy producers who knew that audiences would
want to see the film end in triumphal cele bration. Ultimately, though, what’s
most misleading about To Hell and Back is that it gives the impression that great
heroism comes without devastating psychological damage. In point of fact Audie
Murphy suffered from severe “ battle fatigue” (post- traumatic stress disorder
[PTSD]): lasting and deep psychological trauma manifested by chronic insomnia,
survivor’s guilt, a gambling addiction, mood volatility, scrapes with the law, and
other prob lems that dogged him the rest of his life. He slept, or tried to sleep,
with a loaded .45 under his pillow. “To become an executioner, somebody cold
and analytical, to be trained to kill, and then to come back into civilian life and
be alone in the crowd—it takes an awful long time to get over it,” he told jour-
nalist Thomas Morgan in 1967. “Fear and depression come over you” (quoted in
Martone, 2010, p. 151).Twelve O’Clock High (1949)
Synopsis
Twelve O’Clock High is an American war film produced by Darryl F. Zanuck,
directed by Henry King, and adapted by Sy Bartlett and Beirne Lay, Jr. from their
1948 novel of the same title. Starring Gregory Peck, Gary Merrill, and Dean Jag-
ger, the film is about aircrews in the U.S. Army’s Eighth Air Force flying daylight
bombing missions against Nazi Germany and occupied France during the Second
World War.